\ , I ;;J rr' i . ,'. t ';'\ .:' ' # ':::' '%;:""'<" <"1,:,.",.",,,::,,.r U ...t \ " \" . < ., .:: . :. , ,;,",,,...,,.,.,,,,,,., :.:c U<O;' Ij .'þ' ')1.: " '- to unexamined assumptions, and he tries to examine them now. As far as he's aware, lap dancing is a lawful pursuit. But if he'd seen the three men hurrying, even furtively; from the Wellcome Trust or the British Library he might already have stepped from his car. That they were running makes it possible they'll be even more irritated than he is by the dela The car is a 5 Series Bl\1W, a ve- hicle he associates for no good reason with criminality; drug dealing. And there are three men, not one. The shortest is in the front passenger seat, and the door on that side is opening as he watches, fol- lowed immediately by the driver's, and then the rear off-side door. Perowne, who does not intend to be uapped into talking from a sitting position, gets out of his car. The half minute's pause has given the situation a gamelike quality in which calculations have already been made. The three men have their own reasons for holding back and discussing their next move. It's important, Perowne thinks as he goes around to the front of his car, to remember that he's in the right and that he's an He also has to be careM. But these contradictory notions aren't helpful, and he decides he'll be better off feeling his way into the con- frontation, rather than troubling him- self wIth ground rules. His impulse then is to ignore the men, walk away from them, around the front of the Mercedes, to get a view of the damaged side. But even as he stands, with hands on hips, in a pose of proprietorial outrage, he keeps the men, now advancing as a group, on the edge of his vision. At a glance, there seems to be no :,'='",j::=:.,. C" U , >. :"ii'i;/ damage at all. The wing mirror is intact, there are no dents in the panels; amaz- ingly; the metallic-silver paint is clean. He leans forward to catch the light at a different angle. With fingers splayed, he runs a hand lightly over the body; as if he really knows what he's about. There is nothing. Not a blemish. In immediate, tactical terms, this seems to leave him at a disadvantage. He has nothing to show for his anger. If there's any dam- age at all, it is out of sight, betvveen the front wheels. The men have stopped to look at something in the road. The short fellow in the black suit touches with the tip of his shoe the BMW's shorn-off wing mirror, turning it over the way one might a dead animal. One of the others, a tall young man with the long mourrrful face of a horse, picks it up, cradling it in both hands. They stare down at it together and then, at a remark from the short man, they turn their faces toward Per- owne simultaneously; with abrupt cu- riosity; like deer disturbed in a forest. For the first time, it occurs to him that he might be in some kind of danger. Offi- cially closed off at both ends, the street is completely deserted. Behind the men, on the Tottenham Court Road, a bro- ken file of protesters is making its way south to join the main bod Perowne glances over his shoulder. There, behind him on Gower Street, the march proper has begun. Thousands packed in a single dense column are making for Parliament Square, their banners angled forward heroically; as in a revolutionary poster. From their faces, hands, and clothes they emanate the rich color, almost like ' '" \ -- " ..... : ';.' . 0;....."'. Ñ.y:;YP...'IN' w.;" ::-:-::,:._. :-_.:. x. , ' "," :'/"'''/''' '''''' , . .! ....-.:.-.- .:!'.:....Xx"....(. x :;.: v...;-;.. o) " ..., ", '" ."'.. I (I; .'\,. A"%; "', ;: : : _ :...: . "y':'" " -<;, ^ .., ,t -;ç \ -.:. ::"" ,", . .?- . . ",. ," .... ... . :s;:. _ t....... ...::,.:<<ý........ . ..; C '/= = 7 '^ fill :< '?t,, -w "'"' ---------- :.. - .. '. :......:..:-. ?:: ... >>........ .... . '^' /. warmth, peculiar to compacted human- ity: For dramatic effect, they're walking in silence to the funereal beat of march- ing drums. The three men resume their ap- proach. As before, the short man-five feet five or six, perhaps-is out in front. His gait is distinctive, with a little jazzy twist and dip of his trunk, as though he were punting along a gentle stretch of river. The punter from the Spearmint Rhino. Perhaps he's listening to his headphones. Some people go nowhere, even into disputes, without a soundtrack The other tvvo have the manner of sub- ordinates, sidekicks. They're wearing trainers, tracksuits, and hooded sweat- shirts-the currency of the street, so general as to be no style at alL Theo sometimes dresses this way, in order, so he says, not to make decisions about how he looks. The horse-faced fellow is still holding the wing mirror in both hands, presumably to make a point. The unre- lenting throb of drums is not helpM to the situation, and the fact that so many people are close by, unaware of him, makes Henry feel all the more isolated. It's best to go on looking bus He drops down closer to the car, noting a squashed Coke can under his front tire. There is, he sees now, with both relief and irrita- tion, an irregular patch on the rear door where the sheen is diminished, as though rubbed with a fine emery cloth. Surely the contact point, confined to a two-foot patch. How fight he was, swerving away before he hit the brake. He feels steadier now; straightening up to face the men as they stop in front of him. Unlike some of his colleagues-the surgical psychopaths-Henry doesn't actually relish personal confrontation. He isn't the machete-wielding type. But clinical experience is, among all else, an abrasive, toughening process, bound to wear away at one's sensitivities. Patients, juniors, the recently bereaved, manage- ment, of course-inevitably; in tvvo de- cades, the moments have come around when he's been required to fight his cor- ner, or explain, or placate in the face of a furious emotional upsurge. There's usu- ally a lot at stake: for colleagues, ques- tions of hierarchy and professional pride or wasted hospital resources, for patients a loss of function, for their relatives a suddenly dead spouse or child-weight-